This blog is all about economic and financial events happening in Mongolia.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Gone too soon: Adorable two-year-old Wang Moheng was the youngest passenger on MH370 when it crashed in remote seas

After more than two weeks of uncertainty, pain and fear, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak yesterday confirmed what everyone already knew in their hearts: the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board.And while it is unclear why the Boeing 777-200 crashed, we do know some of those passengers - including 23-month-old Wang Moheng - died tragically with their whole life still ahead of them.

As the youngest person on the flight and one of his first trips abroad - Moheng was taken to the tropics of Malaysia by his parents and grandparents simply to escape the 'bad air in Beijing', a friend said.

Following their relaxing holiday, the family of five left Kuala Lumpur early Saturday for Beijing but never arrived.

People from at least 13 countries were aboard the Boeing jet, with the 153 Chinese passengers by far the most numerous. Of those from China, Moheng was the youngest.

His picture went viral on social networking sites yesterday, circulating on Facebook and Twitter thousands of times as people stopped to remember the faces behind the tragedy of MH370.

Wang Rui, the young boy’s father, worked in the Beijing office of Boston Consulting Group, an American company. Moheng’s mother, Jiao Weiwei, worked at a Chinese software company. Her parents were also on the plane.

Rui's friend Saleel Limaye told CNN he received an email from him a week before the plane went missing.

'He seemed pretty excited about having a break from work,' he said.

'He's a very smart, hard-working person. He was a very diligent student...and was always one of those guys who would go the extra mile for his teammates. He was slightly quiet but very warm, affectionate person.'

Moheng wasn't the only one whose life was unfairly cut short.

Many of the 239 passengers, like the Wang family, had been on holiday in south-east Asia, a popular destination for Chinese.

There was also a Canadian couple living in Beijing, returning from a vacation in Vietnam they had taken without their two young sons, who were being watched by a grandmother at home.

The plane was also carrying a few large groups, including more than 20 painters and calligraphers who had been honored at an exhibition in Malaysia, and Chinese employees of an American semiconductor company traveling to China with Malaysian colleagues for a work meeting.

And the there were also those in transit, who were intending to just pass through Beijing en route to another destination.

One of those transients was Paul Weeks, a 39-year-old New Zealand engineer living in Perth, Australia, with his wife and two sons - one of whom was born just last year.

He was heading to Mongolia for an assignment with a mining and construction company when the plane vanished.